User equipment (UE) may include computers, smart phones, laptops, set-top boxes, video game consoles, or other network enabled devices. Such equipment may be configured to provide video playback, but may have limited resources (e.g., processor capability, battery life, etc.) for video rendering. The resource limits of equipment may impact the ability of the equipment to provide smooth video-playback in high definition (HD) that is acceptable to users. The speed of both wired and wireless networks have increased, and users are increasingly demanding high quality video performance from their equipment. For example, HD video is becoming more widely available on these networks. Dedicated video acceleration hardware may enhance video playback performance; however not all hardware platforms may currently provide the high quality playback performance associated with HD video.
The video rendering processes in a typical video or multimedia playback system may be computationally intensive and may greatly affect overall system performance of UE. The demands of high-definition video may slow down equipment response times, introduce overall system lag or unresponsiveness, or resulting in a low quality video playback in the form of reduced frame per second (FPS) rendering performance. The failure of UE to handle the performance needs of HD video may result in an undesirable user experience and user frustration.